


unaware i'm tearing you asunder

by platoapproved



Category: Rusty Quill Gaming (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Character Death, No beta we die like... :c
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-04
Updated: 2020-12-04
Packaged: 2021-03-10 04:28:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 608
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27878401
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/platoapproved/pseuds/platoapproved
Summary: Realizations come in their own time.
Relationships: Grizzop drik Acht Amsterdam/Sasha Racket
Comments: 28
Kudos: 34





	1. Grizzop

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Desilite](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Desilite/gifts).



> Don't hate me for this? Title is from 'Running Up That Hill' by Kate Bush.

Grizzop realized he was in love with Sasha on that day beneath the ruined factory in Damascus. It did not come on him suddenly, like a revelation: in a way he’d been realizing it day after day for some time. Since Cairo; since he had seen her brittle smile as she explained she’d never expected to live that long, anyway.

He wasn’t a fool. He knew why that time felt different than their other brushes with death. Together, Grizzop and Sasha had faced zombie swarms and plummeting to their deaths and squizards and mobs of murderous enemies. Of course, Grizzop knew why it was different with the water. But knowing didn’t make it easier or slow the frantic terrified beating of his heart. His hands shook nonetheless as she struggled against his grip, trying to get free so she could save that _damn_ dagger, not letting him heal her properly.

It was in that moment, when Grizzop felt how weak his spell’s effect was, that he knew. He felt the spell floundering, hardly repairing any of the damage that had been done to Sasha as she was battered by the rush of water. In that chaotic instant, Grizzop felt a hot and blind and mindless hatred of Artemis for letting him down. How dare She deny him this one small thing, the only thing that could possibly matter in the entire world, after he had given all of himself over to Her service?

(But of course, Grizzop was a trained paladin. He knew that it did not work like that; goddesses did not _owe_ their followers anything. There shouldn’t be anything, nothing, that could make him doubt his goddess, much less curse her.)

As he moved to heal Sasha a second time, Grizzop knew it down to his marrow, that if this didn’t work—if he lost Sasha to the water—he would be through with Artemis. And so he knew that he was in love with her, had been in love with her, and that he was _hers_ first and his Lady’s second.


	2. Sasha

Sasha realized she was in love with Grizzop a few months after he had died. She had dreamt of him the night before, as she did most nights. They were chasing one another through the villa, playing some complicated agility game that didn’t actually exist in the waking world. 

That morning, some refugees from Rome passed by on the road. They were ragged, dirty, hollow-eyed; she recognized the placid look of despair on all their faces. It reminded her of home. When they asked if there was any work to be done in exchange for food, she let them come in. Sasha kept one hand on a dagger the entire time, watching from a little distance as they cleaned themselves up and sat down to the meager meal Cicero had made them.

Gradually, as they ate, their silence fell away. They began to talk: softly, at first, then louder. A long-haired woman made some joke that Sasha did not hear and the teenage boy sitting beside her laughed.

It was not Grizzop’s laugh in every detail, but it was close enough. The sound hit Sasha like a knife; it slid neatly between her ribs and stole her breath. Her ears were full of the sound of Grizzop’s laugh—from those times she had heard him really, _truly_ laugh—wild and high and gorgeously free. Sasha remembered _making_ him laugh, the wide white flash of his sharp grin, the way it always got his red eyes welling with tears, and his helpless gasps for breath when he tried to compose himself.

And finally, she knew.


End file.
